Handmade Bricks

Heritage of Handmade Bricks

In our long history our handmade bricks have been used on many of the most important and prestigious buildings in the country.

While investing in some of the latest technology in order to remain efficient we have maintained the essence of what makes our product unique, keeping the hand making skills alive as well as firing in traditional updraft Scotch kilns.

Using traditional tools and techniques the process has changed very little over the last 100 years. Our handmakers can make around 1000 bricks per day.

Drying

Each brick contains a pint of water when it is made, which has to be removed through drying before the bricks can be fired. During drying the brick will shrink by around ten percent, therefore the process must be carefully controlled to avoid cracking.

The heat source for our dryers now comes from wood chip burned in biomass boilers. Once dried the bricks are hand set into the kiln, leaving a finger width gap between each brick to allow optimum firing.

Firing and Blending

Our oil fired kilns are fired for around 24 hours and take a further three days to cool. Our woodfired kilns are fired for five days, stoked day and night.

It takes two people a week to empty the kiln and the bricks are then hand blended to our standard ranges or to bespoke mixes depending on customer requirements.